KingFast F3 Plus Ultra SSD (240GB) Review and Ratings

Editors’ Rating:

Our Verdict:
The F3 Plus comes from a relatively unknown company, but it’s generally competitive with other like-priced SSDs. Its stellar large-file read speeds could make it a good fit for gamers looking for fast level load times. Read More…

What We Liked…

Excellent sequential-read performance

Available in capacities as small as 60GB

Available in 7mm and 9mm thicknesses

What We Didn’t…

Small-file performance isn’t great

Mainly available direct from KingFast, a company little known in U.S.

No bundled drive-cloning software

KingFast F3 Plus Ultra SSD (240GB) Review

Table of Contents

Introduction

We don’t envy any company trying to make inroads into the U.S. market for consumer solid-state drives (SSDs). It will have big-name entities (Samsung, Intel) to compete with, along with storage-focused giants (Seagate). Then there are smaller, but still respected, SSD purveyors such as Crucial and SanDisk, with roots in the memory business and years of established SSD credibility.

Is there room for another serious player in this crowded component market in the United States? Shenzen, China-based KingFast seems to think so. According to the company’s profile page, it has been making SSDs since 2008, with annual sales of between $10 and $50 million. And it's now a subsidiary of the larger memory maker RunCore. So this isn’t some tiny company cobbling together drives.

Still, KingFast is pretty new to the U.S. market, without any real name recognition. And its drives are generally only available direct from the company’s Web site, although KingFast models do occasionally pop up on Amazon.com.

The KingFast F3 Plus is the company’s current high-end consumer drive, available in capacities ranging from 60GB to 480GB, with pricing for the 240GB model we tested lining up with mainstream options like Samsung’s SSD 840 EVO.

Should you opt for this drive over compelling alternatives with more name recognition (and, likely, more comprehensive U.S. support)? That’s mostly up to you. But the KingFast F3 Plus is a competent performer on most fronts, with just about the best sustained read speeds we’ve seen from a 2.5-inch SSD. Whether you’re willing to trade that for less certainty of long-term support should you run into issues down the road is your call.

On the one hand, you have the option of buying an SSD from a giant multinational like Samsung, from whom you can be reasonably sure will willing and able to honor your three- or five-year warranty that many years down the road. In the case of KingFast, we have no reason to believe the company is going anywhere anytime soon, but for the U.S. market, its support resources consists of an address in Ontario, Canada, a phone number, and a couple of online forms.